Abstract

Laura Doyle, “At World's Edge: Post/Coloniality, Charles Maturin, and the Gothic Wanderer” (pp. 513–547) The Gothic text has been shown to represent colonialism's crimes through its literary tropes of imprisonment, terror, rape, and tyranny. This essay takes a further step to propose that Gothic texts also register the historical resistance to colonialism's crimes. That is, they refer to anti-colonial insurgency—in Ireland, India, the Caribbean, and elsewhere—in the process evincing ambivalent anxieties about global, imperial instability. After reviewing the Gothic‘s entanglement with discourses of both liberation and barbarism, reflective of its contradictory political investments, the essay focuses on Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) to demonstrate the ways in which Gothic texts are structured against insurgency even as, in their “wandering,” haunted figures, they unveil a world in turmoil.

Log in using your username and password

Log in through your institution

You may be able to gain access using your login credentials for your institution. Contact your library if you do not have a username and password.

If your organization uses OpenAthens, you can log in using your OpenAthens username and password. To check if your institution is supported, please see this list. Contact your library for more details.